ages, in the case of subsidiary companies, forty per cent of the cost of producing steel." If the average cost of transport on the Nation's business of $63,000,000,000 in 1920 was forty per cent, the consumer would have paid more than $25,000,000,000 for transportation.

The commerce tributary to the lakes, under existing conditions, is under the economic handicap of long hauls and great transportation costs when compet. ing for foreign or seaboard trade. The geographical situation of the lakes in the midland of the continent, the great extent of shore-line adapted to ports of accumulation for the vast agricultural and industrial production, and the depth of water in the lakes are a combination of natural conditions conformable to the most efficient employment of large freight vessels, the most economical known means of transportation. The greatest economies can be realized in navigation on through freights-that is, where bulk is not broken from the port of loading to destination.

These conditions cannot be realized in the commerce of the Great Lakes until the deep-water .way, the New Welland Canal, now being constructed by the Canadian Government between the upper lakes and Lake Ontario, is completed and the deep-water way down the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic is developed. This development in its simplest form consists in the deepening and widening of the six canals of the present St. Lawrence system. These canals are from one to fourteen miles in length; their combined length is less than forty-five miles.

The cost of ocean freights averages one-tenth of the cost of rail freights, or in the approximate proportion of one mill to one cent per ton mile.

The augmentation in the cost of transport where bulk is broken and cargo transferred between terminals is emphasized in the shipment of wheat from the lakes by way of the New York State Barge Canal to New York en route to

4,603

47

35

100

1 In elevator. 2 On barges. It is estimated that half of the cost and about half of the time will be saved in shipping directly down the St. Lawrence to destination. The distance from the foot of lake navigation to Liverpool via the Barge Canal is 3,600 miles, by way of the St. Lawrence it is about 3,100 miles, or 500 miles less, or about the length of the canal system between New York and Buffalo.

In addition to the New York State Barge Canal there is the Canadian canal system down the St. Lawrence to Montreal. The State Barge Canal is designed for twelve feet navigation; there is but ten feet available. The cost of this system was $200,000,000. The Canadian system is fourteen feet deep in the 75 miles of canalization between Lake Erie and Montreal; the river reaches between the canals would average thirty feet in depth. The distance from the present foot of lake navigation to Montreal is 400 miles; with the opening of the New Welland Canal this distance will be reduced to 110 miles.

By reason of the shorter and cheaper haul down the St. Lawrence there was a greater volume of grain shipped out of Montreal last season than the combined grain shipments out of all other Atlantic ports.

The locks of the New Welland Canal, now being constructed and well advanced towards completion, are seven in number and capable of locking vessels of very much greater capacity than the present lake vessels of 15,000 tons over the difference of elevation of 330 feet between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario at Niagara Falls. When this canal

becomes operative, there will remain but 110 miles separating the deep-water navigation of the lakes from ocean navigation at Montreal. Within this distance there remains to be enlarged and deepened from fourteen feet to thirty feet but 45 miles of canal, a simple and straightforward process along lines familiar to engineers on the St. Lawrence for more than one generation. This undertaking, in its engineering features and in the volume of excavation, when compared to that of Panama, is a minor project. The average width of the Panama Canal is three times as great, and some of the cuts, as in excavating through the continental divide at Culebra, are more than 300 feet deep.

New York is about one thousand miles south of Central Europe, our main foreign market. The St. Lawrence River and Gulf are in the direction of the shortest possible sea lane to Central Europe.

The average rate of travel of an ocean or lake freighter is 250 miles a day. The average travel of a freight car is 30 miles a day. The average cost of ocean freights is but one-tenth of the charge for rail haul. The rates of freighting the bulk cargoes, for which lake vessels are especially designed, are less than seventy per cent of the cost of ocean carriage.

In modern water carriage size means cheapness, the transport of a given weight of cargo in a single vessel being cheaper than in two vessels of half the size. The concentration of carrying power affects economies in officers and crews, their wages, provisions, and accommodation space, and size makes for economy in ship-building. If two steamers of 2,500 tons each were to cost for both, say, $500,000, one vessel of 6,000 tons could be built for that price, and for double of the cost of a 6,000-ton vessel a 14,000-ton to 15,000-ton vessel could be built.

It is the navigable depths of channels that is the controlling factor in the em

ployment of the most economical and efficient vessels.

The market will always select the cheapest route for trade; the ports themselves are but the points of collection and distribution of the markets or industrial centers, and their position is determined by this economic relation.1

There are but two States having ports on the lakes and on the Atlantic: New York, though not a great producer of raw materials, is the greatest manufacturing State in the Union; and Pennsylvania, the second in volume of manufactures, whose main industry is the conversion of the iron ore of Lake Superior into steel, made commercially practicable by the economies of water carriage. Montreal is the head of ocean navigation on the St. Lawrence and is the Canadian metropolis.

New York is the greatest port in America, and is the port of distribution for more than half of the sea-borne commerce of the United States; Montreal is the second port in America. These two ports are the main points for the collection and distribution abroad of the products from the region of the Great Lakes.

In the fall of 1919 the Canadian Government accepted the invitation of the United States Government to undertake a joint investigation of the improvement of the St. Lawrence River with a view to the development of a channel way that would afford through passageway for ocean-going vessels from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. An international joint commission was formed and engineers appointed to investigate and to formulate plans and estimate the cost of an international development of the St. Lawrence. The plans and esti

mates have been made.

Two hundred and seventy million dollars is the estimated cost of a thirty-foot channel way from Lake Ontario to ocean navigation at Montreal, a distance of 182 miles, and the development of 1,500,000 hydroelectric horse-power at the Longue Saulte Rapids.

From the head of the Galops, the first rapid on the St. Lawrence, to Montreal is about 110 miles; the proposed works are virtually all within this distance.

The general scheme is, starting from Montreal and going up the river, to deepen the present Lachine Canal with some variation from the present line. This canal is 81⁄2 miles long and passes the forty-five feet of drop in the Lachine Rapids.

From the head of these rapids Lake St. Louis runs eighteen miles to the entrance of the Soulanges Canal. This canal passes in the fourteen miles of its length the Cascades, Cedars, Split Rock, and Coteau Rapids; the difference in elevation over this series of rapids is 84 feet, and it has the greatest potential horse-power on the river. It is proposed to build an entirely new canal past these rapids.

The foregoing data on shipping are from the Encyclopædia Britannica.

International

Lake St. Francis runs from the head of these rapids to the foot of the Cornwall Canal, a distance of 30 miles.

The Cornwall Canal is 11 miles long and passes the 48 feet of drop in the Longue Saulte. It is proposed to develop about 1,500,000 horse-power through the construction of great dams at and above these rapids. These dams will back the water of the river up for about twenty miles to the Rapide Plat, where it is proposed to build another series of great dams, to back the river up above it to about the level of Lake Ontario, and to serve as regulating works to govern the level of that lake.

The impression in the public mind is that this international power and navigation development will flood out all the rapids of the river and leave great placid pools between the dams. This is far from the conditions that will obtain.

The main rapids of the St. Lawrence are the Lachine, the Coteau-Cascade series, and the Longue Saulte; the proposed development will not lessen the turbulence of these rapids or shorten the length of canals required, about 34 miles, to carry navigation past these rapids. The effect will be to drown out the two minor rapids, the Rapide Plat and the Galops, and the canals around them and to develop 1,500,000 horsepower.

If the present canals were deepened to 30 feet and no dams built or power developed, the cost would probably be less than half of that of the more elaborate scheme with its great structures and the great cost of their installation.

The urgent need is a means of transporting the great volume of Western products to the markets of the world and the substitution of the economies of water carriage for the tenfold cost of transportation by rail.

The development of water power is not an urgent need in Canada. There is more water power available on the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and from the runoff of the Laurentians than there are

industries to use it; the population is less than ten per cent of the population of the United States.

In connection with the negotiation relative to a treaty governing the international aspect of the proposed deepwater way and power development, the Canadian Government, in response to a communication from the Secretary of State, replied: "It would not appear to be expedient to deal with the matter at the present time."

The proponents of the project state that the present high cost of transportation of Western products is an avoidable and unnecessary tax and bounty exacted from the producer.

The opponents of the project state that the whole scheme is chimerical and impracticable by reason of the short season of navigation, ice in the Gulf, and fog, and that the cost will run into prohibitive figures; and they also put forward other deep-water way projects that will maintain commerce in its present channels.

The climatic conditions obtaining on the lower St. Lawrence are not more severe than the conditions about Lake Superior, where over 100,000,000 tons are passed through the Saulte Ste. Marie Canal each season; when the St. Law rence deep-water way is developed, there I will not be a more restricted or difficult section for navigation on the route than the present passageway between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Any climatic restrictions that would apply to the proposed deep-water way apply with equal force to the present conditions on the

lakes and to the barge canals and to the port of Montreal-the second port in America in volume of tonnage.

It is to be expected that those ports or States whose present commerce and trade may be deranged or diverted by the proposed trade route will be strenuously opposed to the project, and the seemingly great economic advantages that will accrue to the country as a whole should be weighed against these disadvantages.

66

"B

AMONG THE NEW NOVELS

ABBITT" is the reverse of "Main Street;" it packs into the personality of one ordinary citizen the banality, vulgarized energy, and ambition to be a hustler and a good fellow, of a whole class, while "Main Street" took what was alleged to be (but wasn't) a typical town and diffused all over it the meanness and crassness at which the author chose to direct his arrows of irony. Thus "Georgie" Babbitt is the book; the other people are merely what actors call "feeders" to Babbitt. This is why Mr. Lewis's new story will puzzle and disappoint one large class of novel readers-those who demand situation, construction, suspense, culmination, and all the effect of drama. If, however, such readers will lay aside that perhaps Victorian attitude, they I will find that Babbitt is in himself an epitome of one kind of American life; he bristles with actuality; he holds the stage of one's attention as closely as Lulu Bett did in Miss Gale's story-to compare as opposite characters as there could be.

Babbitt's literary portrait is a piece of meticulous exactness; the technical skill with which his creator avoids the temptation of making a mere type of him is a triumph. So, too, is the cleverness that endows Babbitt with a recurrent, only semi-conscious, longing for romance and idealism, in his breaking away from his campaigns of "pep" and hurrah to go fishing with his stupid and gloomy friend, or now and then to revolt for a time against the crooked business and politics which usually seem to him just what every "regular guy" does.

Fortunately for the reader, who might otherwise tire of the minute realism of the description of Babbitt's daily acts from the time he throws away his safetyrazor blades to his last drink at night, Georgie is a bubbling joy of slang, and his quick, bumptious talk is amusing; whether one laughs at him or with him doesn't much matter. /He is vain, uncultured (though a college graduate), a pusher and a boomer and a jollier. He echoes all the slogans, repeats the dubious stories, "orates" at club dinners, takes for granted that whatever is the business practice must be right, gets his politics and convictions at second hand, and is a successful church booster despite bad breaks in his personal morality. In short, he is an amusing scamp, but he is not a villain; he is not meant as a type, yet his vulgarisms and delinquencies are typical of a pretty large number of men who would be terribly outraged if they were to be told that they were not valuable citizens and go-ahead, progressive American business men. /Irony is sometimes good for the soul, for it strikes deeper than moraliz

1 Babbitt. By Sinclair Lewis. Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York. $2.

ing. But the weakness of unrelieved irony is that it borders on cynicism; there are plenty of Babbitts about; but, thanks be, there are also plenty of nonBabbitts.

Eight years ago, in reviewing Mr. Lewis's "Our Mr. Wrenn," I spoke of it as a first story that aroused great

WILLA CATHER

expectation. The author has certainly gone far since then. The young shoe drummer there depicted was less real but more joyous than Georgie Babbitt; perhaps a little mixture of his gay efficiency and personal cleanness and honor might have made Babbitt something better than the man now so sardonically depicted with faultless realism.

In quite a different way Miss Willa Cather's "One of Ours" is also centered on one person, Claude, the fine and lovable though not very articulate farm lad of Nebraska. As Dorothy Canfield puts it in a review of Miss Cather's admirable book, it "is the whole purpose of the novel to make us see and feel and understand Claude and passionately long to open the doors to his living brothers all around us, imprisoned and baffled like Claude in a bare, neutral, machine-ridden world."

The tone of the story is sympathetic rather than sarcastic, and the subsidiary characters are carefully built up, not merely sketched in. Moreover, we have here, as always in Miss Cather's novels, the atmosphere and charm of outdoor life, realism touched with deep feeling for nature as well as man. Claude is unsatisfied rather than dissatisfied; his natural tendency toward expansion on the side of thoughtful

2 One of Ours. By Willa Cather. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. $2.50.

idealism is hemmed in by his surroundings, by sordid necessities of heavy toil, by a facile and selfish brother, a jocose materialistic father, and finally a narrow, cold, and undomestic wife who in sists on going to China to help the missionaries rather than care for home and husband.

The novel is, so to speak, broken apart in the middle by that which broke apart so many things-the World War. It is disappointing that Claude's problems, so well set forth, should not be worked out to any conclusion. The war scenes are vivid; Claude's experiences are in some respects singular and evidently based on authentic war knowledge, and the inevitable tragic end is moving. The two parts of the book are painfully disjoined; as Mr. Lewis has written of this book, Miss Cather might as well, so far as working out its theme is concerned, have pushed Claude down a well as have sent him to war.

There is a clear note of sincerity in all of Miss Cather's writing. "My Antonia" remains her best book, but "One of Ours" is in impressionistic effect far above the average novel.

3

Mr. Poole's "Millions" is in one sense slight, for it is brief, involves few characters, and is centered on one situation. But its very simplicity is its strength. The theme interests one singularly, because it is that of a test of human nature-whether a woman's honor and conscience will give way to the temptation of self-interest disguised as morality. Madge, half-sister of a man reputed to be a millionaire, is summoned to what may probably be his death-bed. He has neglected her and allowed her to fight her own way, yet she knows that he has made a will in her favor. The brother is unconscious for days; other relatives cluster around, but the sister is legally and morally responsible; an actress appears who has been the brother's mistress and thrusts herself into the foreground; the relatives fear she may grasp the millions at the last minute. The brother comes to himself and demands to see the actress. To thwart him may be to kill him. What shall the sister do? In the end she does what her sense of honor and right dictate: she refuses to shift the responsibility to uncle, aunt, and cousin, who would be shocked to admit to themselves that they at heart hope that the man will die. It would be unfair to tell just how the problem is settled; the result is the growth in this woman under severe trial of firm character, power of decision, and resolve to do what is just and right despite consequences. Madge emerges twice the woman she was, and we know that she will now grapple wisely with life's problem, millions or no millions. Inciden tally the corroding influence of expectant wealth on average people of perfect

3 Millions. By Ernest Poole. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.75.

254

respectability is subtly shown. Prob lems aside, the book has reality and tensity.

Mr. Locke's large circle of admirers will miss in his "Tale of Triona" the whimsicality and humor of "Septimus" and "The Beloved Vagabond;" on the other hand, they will find a note of reality and emotion in the narrative of the plight of John Briggs, a man of lowly origin but imaginative genius, who blossoms into literary fame as Alexis Triona, and neglects to state that much of his raw material came from a notebook he found on a dead man's body. When he falls in love and marries, one lie forces another, and when the explosion comes the horror of his bride is not so much at the original fault as at the edifice of falsehood built to sustain

The Tale of Triona. By William J. Locke. $2. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

BIOGRAPHY

DIARY OF A JOURNALIST: LATER ENTRIES (THE). By Sir Henry Lucy. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $6.

This covers the period from 1890 to 1910. Sir Henry's knowledge of English society, politics, and journalism is extensive. He gives us here a welcome addition to the Diary published years ago. There are numerous anecdotes about people of note and laughable stories gleaned from various sources. WORLD WORTH WHILE (A).

By W. A. Rogers. Illustrations. Harper & Brothers, New York and London. $3.

A delightful book of reminiscences about cartoonists by one of them. It tells not only of cartoonists but of their victims or shall we rather say their subjects? Most of the cartoonists have a saving grace of humor which is often appreciated by those they caricature-as, for instance, Mr. Roosevelt, who is described in this book as getting no end of amusement out of the pictures that Mr. a bad boy. represented him as Rogers's agreeable text is accompanied by a number of reproductions of his cartoons.

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM DEFINITIONS. By H. S. Canby.

Harcourt,

Brace & Co., New York. $2. Professor Canby always writes with clarity. These collected papers deal with recent literary discussion and the modern trend of criticism. What makes a book popular? What makes it a work of art? What novels do survive and what should survive? Light on such questions is found in these pages. The views put forth are tolerant as well as acute.

TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION ADVENTURES IN BOLIVIA. By C. H. Prodgers. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. Few readers will leave the pages of It tells this well-printed book uncut. in simple language the story of an adventurous Englishman's trip to hostile ndians in the hinterland of Bolivia to luce them to sell their rubber. He nt unarmed and won their friendship

through his tact and address, making to an assembly of warriors a two-hour speech that saved his life and won them over to his projects. Simple color sketches by the author accompany the text.

LAND OF THE MIAMIS. By Elmore Barce.

The Benton Review Shop, Fowler, Indiana. This is a painstaking attempt to tell the story of the winning of the "Old Northwest" from the Indians. The mass of disconnected material that comprises the sources of the history of our relations with the Indian tribes led by Tecumseh and other less well known chieftains has been carefully worked over by the author, and a comprehensive and significant résumé is the result. OUT OF THE WORLD NORTH OF NIGERIA. By Angus Buchanan, M.C. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $6.

The author tells of a journey of fourteen hundred miles on camel-back through a practically unknown region of the Western Sudan. He discovered many new species and subspecies of birds and small animals, and proves himself a good story-teller as well as an experienced naturalist.

UP AGAINST IT IN NIGERIA. By LangaLanga. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $5

A lively and entertaining account of adventures in Africa and in getting there from England, including the author's narrow escape from death when his ship was torpedoed by the Huns. Conversational and informal to a degree, the narrative by its naïveté and humor justifies the plentiful use of the personal pronoun.

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY FROM HARRISON TO HARDING. By Arthur Wallace Dunn. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $7.50.

This work aims at presenting a political history of the period from Harrison to Harding, but its chief interest lies in its innumerable anecdotes of public men, with many of whom the author became personally acquainted during his long service as a Washington newspaper corIt gives a "behind the respondent.

scenes" view of public life which is extremely entertaining, though many of the stories make the reader feel that the author is "telling tales out of school," and some of them will rightly give offense in certain quarters. While bearing some of the marks of the hurried writing inevitable in the habits of the daily newspaper correspondent, the volumes are decidedly interesting and will attract a host of readers.

SCIENCE BOOK OF THE SKY (THE). By M. Lucklesh. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $3.50. Not a book about astronomy, as the reader might at first suppose, but one that deals with the sky as seen by the airman. It discusses the phenomena of clouds, winds, and weather in a spirit that is at once poetic and scientific. In the author's description of airplane voyages through the clouds an attractive literary quality is thus skillfully combined with accurate knowledge. WONDER BOOK OF CHEMISTRY (THE). By Jean H. Fabre. The Century Company. New York. $2.50.

The amount of book material that still continues to be dug out, so to speak, from the literary remains of that remarkable man, Jean H. Fabre, the naturalist, is surprising. Here we have a series of talks about chemistry, written largely in the form of dialogue, and not only simple, but well calculated to arouse the curiosity and interest of young people.

SEEDS OF

POETRY

TIME. By John Drinkwater. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.25. The delicious coolness and delicate

clarity of John Drinkwater's poetry is to be observed at its highest peak in this volume. He is essentially a didactic poet, metaphysical at times, but never so in a heavy manner. While his lyric note is always obvious, it may never be termed of that rippling order that we associate with the most successful lyrics. His poetry flows slower, but its strength is undoubted and the pantheistic urge that is always its undertone reaches the reader like a small clear wind, cool and gentle, essentially lofty at times but never objectionably so. Beauty is a high passion with him, but he is its disciple and not its feverish worshiper. "Thrift" (herewith quoted) might be Mr. Drinkwater's credo:

No beauty beauty overthrows,
But every joy its season knows,
And all enchanted hours prepare
Enchantment for to-morrow's wear.
Who in the just society
That walks with him this hour can

see

But shadows of another bliss
Loses both that delight and this.
Grieve not the parting day, for soon
The nightingales will sing the moon
Climbing the track that now the sun
Leaves when the songs of day are
done.

And grieve not when her beauty pales,

And silence keeps the nightingales, For that eclipse again will bring The sun with all his birds to sing.